Friday, September 25, 2009

We’re back all right – at the back of the pack.

Remember this from two short years ago?

"The news is spreading throughout the world: Canada's back," Harper told the crowd of about 35,000 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sunday.

"Canada's back as a vital player on the global stage ... Canadians are citizens of the world and we're making a positive contribution in every field of human endeavour."

Well we’re back all right – at the back of the pack. Here’s what the United Nations thinks about our relative position in the world when it comes to ‘green’ stimulus spending.

The Global Green New Deal update for the upcoming G20 summit in Pittsburgh revealed the Harper government was spending the equivalent of about $77 U.S. per person in green stimulus, putting it in ninth place out of 13 countries evaluated.

Yup, we’re right there at the bottom with Spain, South Africa and Mexico. Disgraceful.

3 comments:

austin said...

Green stimulus? Are you kidding me? What the hell is green stimulus? Do you really think people who have been laid off care whether the spending that gets them back to work is enviromentaly freindly in the eyes of some rich socialist?

wilson said...

So are 'green initiatives in oil and gas' listed under their ''subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry'',
instead of green stimulus?
Just wondering if you know.

wilson said...

So I think I can answer my own question, the answer is we don't know,
because Canada's green stimulus was not studied in detail:

''...The update has looked in detail at seven G20 countries which are China, France, Germany, the United States, Mexico, the Republic of Korea and South Africa. ...
Other countries with significant green spending as a percentage of their stimulus packages
-studied in less detail-
are Australia, over 20 per cent; the United Kingdom, 17 per cent; Canada, eight per cent; Spain, six per cent and Japan, six per cent.

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=596&ArticleID=6325&l=en&t=long

note, no where in the report was Canada called a laggard